Monday, October 25, 2010

All Tied Up in Colorado Senate

The Colorado Senate race is all tied up with a week to go. Michael Bennet and Ken Buck are each getting support from 47% of voters in the state.

Bennet's hanging in there pretty well given his status as an unpopular incumbent. At 51%, a majority of voters in the state disapprove of the job he's done since being appointed last year to only 40% who approve of him. Usually you'd be dead in the water with those kinds of numbers as an incumbent but he lucked out when Republicans nominated an unappealing candidate of their own. 49% of voters have an unfavorable opinion of Ken Buck to only 44% who see him favorably.

Buck's unpopularity is a major factor with the voters remaining undecided in the race. It's a group that by most measures should hand Buck a narrow victory in the end: 45% are Republicans while only 11% are Democrats. They're supporting Tom Tancredo 53-23 over John Hickenlooper in the Governor's race. 73% of them disapprove of the job Barack Obama's doing to only 7% who give him good marks. But they also have a very dim view of Buck at 59% seeing him unfavorably and only 13% in a positive light. Those voters have to decide between the competing impulses of disliking Democrats but also disliking Buck and that could be the ultimate determiner of who wins this contest.

In contrast to most races across the country Bennet is benefiting from a considerably more unified party than Buck, taking 92% of Democrats while his opponent is getting only 84% of Republicans. Buck keeps the race tied despite that because there are more Republicans than Democrats in the likely voter pool this year and because he has a 46-44 advantage with independents.

This is going to be a close one and the big trend to watch this final week is what happens with those undecided Republicans who are none too fond of their party's nominee.

8 comments:

Bennett, like Sestak in PA, is seeing the benefit of dissatisfield dems "coming home", but he's still well short of what it will take to get elected.

Most the GOP undecideds are likely Norton supporters who continue to hold a grudge. They may not want to tell a pollster they'll vote for Buck, but in the current enviornment they are unlikely to stay home and absolutely will not vote for Bennett. You are probably looking at Benetts top level of support and an eventual 51-47 loss.

A one-point movement proves... that the concept of 'margin of error' is lost on certain anonymous commenters. PPP found the race effectively tied before. Other pollsters verified PPP's results. PPP finds the race effectively tied now. That's a confirmation of PPP's effectiveness at detecting emerging trends.

Independent polls other than PPP, as well as both campaigns, showed tightening in favor of Bennet. This also makes sense considering the recent media attacks on Buck.

PPP showed no movement, or movement in the opposite direction. Ergo, PPP is/was wrong. Unless you've had a bit too much kool-aide, in which case PPP is always right and all other pollsters, both campaigns, the media, and my lyin' eyes are wrong.

Interesting comparison to the SUSA poll, though - both have Senate tied at 47, but fairly different results for governor. Also interesting that 45% of the sample claim to have voted already.